Chapter 96

After inquiring about his blind date, Sha Zhu walked with his hands tucked into his sleeves, wanting to go home. Hearing these women in the courtyard talking about the Li family, he knew that the news about the child had been leaked by someone.

"I say, you ladies, hey, don't talk about people behind their backs, have some moral integrity."

Sha Zhu was an upright person and couldn't stand these people gossiping behind others' backs, especially about Li Xuewu, with whom he had a good relationship.

"Just mind your own business."

Jia Zhangshi, who was angry that Sha Zhu hadn't returned for the blind date, directly threw Sha Zhu's words back at him.

"Exactly, Sha Zhu, you wouldn't be trying to curry favor with Li Xuewu, would you?"

"It really is, Zhuzi, you'd better think it through. Do you know what kind of person Li Xuewu was before?"

"Exactly, now that he's brought a child back, his job will be finished sooner or later, and he's even a cadre."

"Cadre my foot, he can't even control his own belt. If someone reports him, Li Xuewu will be finished."

After this was said, several women were stunned for a moment, and their gazes towards Jia Zhangshi were a bit strange.

Gossiping behind people's backs is gossiping, this is the "jianghu," but reporting someone is beyond the capabilities of these women.

Sha Zhu didn't care about these women and said with a wicked smile, "If you're not afraid of death, then say it. Just gossip here. Think about it, this Li Xuewu sent more than a dozen people to the western suburbs to be executed as soon as he started working at the steel mill."

"I Have a Scroll of Ghosts and Gods"

This sentence scared this group of women. In those years, executions were all carried out by large trucks taking people out without even wearing hoods, and they were shot at the western suburb execution ground. These people had all seen the fun on the street.

Seeing that everyone had listened, Sha Zhu tucked his hands into his sleeves and chuckled, "Reporting, reporting, do you know which way the gate of the reporting office opens? If Li Xuewu hadn't been prepared, would he have been able to bring the child back?"

Sha Zhu said earnestly, "Not to mention the punishment for false accusations, just talking about Li Xuewu's ruthlessness, he would find it dirty to clean you up, but it's more than enough to kill your men. When the time comes, he can make your men kneel and beg him, do you believe it?"

Looking at the awkward expressions of the women, Sha Zhu scolded again, "What? Are you tired of living a good life at home? Want to learn from Aunt Jia and become a widow? I think that's fine~"

"Oh, I still have water boiling in the pot, I have to go back."

"Me too, my clothes are still soaking in the basin."

Thinking of the ruthlessness of Li Xuewu that their own men had mentioned, several women turned pale and dispersed.

Seeing people disperse, Sha Zhu said to Jia Zhangshi, who wanted to scold him, "Aunt Jia, think about that thing that was pointed at your forehead last time. Do you guess he will pull the trigger directly if you fall into Li Xuewu's hands again? Don't forget you have a record at the steel mill."

"He dares! He's afraid of people talking about his own dirty deeds? You wait, I'll report him for bad conduct sooner or later."

Facing Sha Zhu's sarcasm, Jia Zhangshi was tough on the outside but weak on the inside.

Sha Zhu didn't let her off either, his mouth curling, and he said stubbornly, "Go, go, go, go now. If you think it's too far, I'll borrow a bicycle to take you there. Do you need me to point the way and tell you where to report?"

Jia Zhangshi glared at Sha Zhu, who was spouting damaging words.

"Ptooey! You're not a good cookie either. You're hoping I die early so you can move into my house, right? Give up that thought!"

Jia Zhangshi spat and ran home after speaking.

Sha Zhu chuckled at Jia Zhangshi twice and went back to his room humming a tune.

In the front courtyard, Li Xuewu was helping his grandfather assemble a cradle. His grandfather had already made the cradle that was to be hung from the ceiling beam.

The old saying goes that there are three treasures in the Northeast: ginseng, sable fur, and Ula grass.

Everyone knows ginseng is a valuable traditional Chinese medicinal material.

Everyone is also familiar with sable fur; the coats worn by noble people are all made of sable fur. Of course, there are also high and low grades like black sable and purple sable, which won't be discussed here.

Ula grass is a herbaceous plant in the Northeast. In the old days, people in the Northeast used leather to sew and stuff it with Ula grass to make cold-proof shoes. It was the beloved "grass shoes" of the poor in the north.

"Ula" means leather boots in Manchu and is a kind of "earthy leather shoe" worn by people in the Northeast in winter.

There are three treasures and three oddities in the Northeast: window paper is pasted on the outside, big girls smoke big pipes, and children are hung up to be raised.

The first oddity says window paper is pasted on the outside. Because the Northeast region is cold, people use paper strips to paste the gaps in the windows with paste in winter. This is not strange, but what is strange is that it is pasted on the outside.

That is because the winter in the Northeast lasts for 4 or 5 months, and pasting it inside the house makes it easy to get wet by water vapor and easy to be blown by the wind from the window gaps.

So in the early years, every household in the Northeast using wooden window frames was like this.

The second oddity says big girls smoke big pipes. Smoking was a custom for people in the Northeast in the past, and everyone smoked. Li's grandmother smoked when she was young.

Big girls in the Northeast grew up living with the elderly in their families. In the winter, they stayed indoors, and if they didn't fiddle with smoke, they really had nothing to do. Smoking secondhand smoke is not as good as smoking firsthand smoke, so big girls all smoked big pipes.

The third oddity says children are hung up to be raised. The cradle for children in the Northeast is different from other places. It uses ropes to hang the cradle up, usually on the ceiling beam. In this way, when the mother is doing chores in the house, she only needs to push it occasionally, and the cradle can swing by itself for a long time.

This custom originated from the earliest residents of the Northeast, the Manchu and Mongol peoples. Both of these peoples were peoples on horseback and nomadic peoples, so when everyone followed the water, they often put their children in cradles and hung them on horseback to migrate.

The cradle that grandfather made for the child now is hung on the ceiling beam.

Some cradles are woven from rattan, but the north does not produce rattan, so grandfather used wooden beams to buckle the card slots and thin wooden boards to make a cradle with two upturned ends. The whole is oval, and there are two symmetrical small ears on each side for tying ropes.

Li Xuewu took off his cotton shoes and got on the kang, threaded two ropes on the ceiling beam, and tied them to the four ears of the cradle.

"Lower it a bit more."

Grandfather stood on the ground and directed, while the old lady sat on the side holding the child for reference.

The height of the cradle should be at the chest position of an adult sitting on the kang, so that the temperature of the heated kang can warm the child in the cradle without making the child overheated.

Li Xuewu lowered the height of the ropes according to grandfather's instructions and adjusted it to a suitable position.

"That's it, come down."

Seeing that grandfather said it was suitable, Li Xuewu tied the ropes tightly and squatted down to test the strength of the ropes. It was quite suitable.

The bottom of the cradle was covered with a layer of thick dry grass, and Liu Yin spread a newly made small quilt on the dry grass and put a small pillow on it.

"Come, let's try if the cradle made by Great-Grandfather is good." The old lady held the child with both hands and put him in the cradle.

Li Xuewu pushed it gently, and the cradle swung left and right. The child, seeing such a fun thing for the first time, grabbed his little hands and kept looking at the few people around him.

"Oh my, it's really beautiful, sitting in the cradle is really beautiful."

The old lady pushed the cradle while teasing the child in it.

"It's all your fault for being naughty when you were young. The one in our family before was rattan-woven, which your grandfather bought from the market. It was very sturdy."

Liu Yin said and slapped Li Xuewu, scolding, "You were the one who tied the cradle with ropes in the courtyard and let the Yan Jiefang and Yan Jiecheng brothers from across the street pull you to play. That big brick ground, it broke in two days. Otherwise, the granddaughter could have used it."

Li Xuewu defended himself with a cheeky face, "Out with the old, in with the new. Look, isn't my daughter using a new cradle? Look at how good the cradle Great-Grandfather made is."